Monokroussos on not winning a model game
7/1/2009 – Few things in chess are more satisfying than winning a model game. The opening
prep goes smoothly, one gains an advantage of some sort of another, and a series
of fine moves leads to the inexorable conclusion: we win! And then there's the
other 90% of the time. Lecture this Wednesday at 9 p.m. ET on Playchess.
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Dennis Monokroussos writes:
Sometimes the success story takes place before our very eyes, but usually something else happens. Maybe the game is settled by a blunder, ends in a draw, or – worse still – we lose. Alternatively, the result is satisfactory but the path is a wild one. First one side has the advantage, then the other side fights back, and at the end of the slugfest an unpredictable conclusion appears. When that happens, then although we may not have the deep satisfaction of winning a model game, the resulting feeling might be even better: the feeling of having experienced and survived an adventure.
It's just such a game we'll look at in our ChessBase show this week, played in the FIDE World Championship in San Luis 2005. Peter Svidler had White against then-champion Rustam Kasimdzhanov, and the game took an incredible course. Kasimdzhanov introduced a novelty, but Svidler reacted well and obtained an edge. The position was incredibly sharp though, and when he erred Kasimdzhanov found a brilliant resource that gave him a big advantage. Then he too erred... but these are the sorts of errors that are far easier to spot in analysis than over the board. Besides, without the errors along the way, we would have been deprived of a truly amazing conclusion.
What happened? Join us and see! The show is free, after all – just log on to the Playchess.com server at 9 p.m. ET tonight (Wednesday night; that's 3 a.m. CET Thursday morning), go to the Broadcast room and select Svidler-Kasimdzhanov in the Games list. Hope to see you there!
Dennis Monokroussos' Radio ChessBase lectures begin on Wednesdays at 9 p.m. EST, which translates to 02:00h GMT, 03:00 Paris/Berlin, 13:00h Sydney (on Thursday). Other time zones can be found at the bottom of this page. You can use Fritz or any Fritz-compatible program (Shredder, Junior, Tiger, Hiarcs) to follow the lectures, or download a free trial client. |
You can find the exact times for different locations in the world at World Time and Date. Exact times for most larger cities are here. And you can watch older lectures by Dennis Monokroussos offline in the Chess Media System room of Playchess:
Enter the above archive room and click on "Games" to see the lectures. The lectures, which can go for an hour or more, will cost you between one and two ducats. That is the equivalent of 10-20 Euro cents (14-28 US cents).
Monokroussos in Mexico: World Championship 2007 |
Dennis Monokroussos is 41, lives in South Bend, IN, where he teaches chess and occasionally works as an adjunct professor of philosophy at the University of Notre Dame and Indiana University-South Bend.
At one time he was one of the strongest juniors in the U.S. and has reached a peak rating of 2434 USCF, but several long breaks from tournament play have made him rusty. He is now resuming tournament chess in earnest, hoping to reach new heights.
Dennis has been working as a chess teacher for ten years now, giving lessons to adults and kids both in person and on the internet, worked for a number of years for New York’s Chess In The Schools program, where he was one of the coaches of the 1997-8 US K-8 championship team from the Bronx, and was very active in working with many of CITS’s most talented juniors.
When Dennis Monokroussos presents a game, there are usually two main areas of focus: the opening-to-middlegame transition and the key moments of the middlegame (or endgame, when applicable). With respect to the latter, he attempts to present some serious analysis culled from his best sources (both text and database), which he has checked with his own efforts and then double-checked with his chess software.
